Tom Youngs will complete one of the most remarkable journeys in professional
rugby on Saturday when the former centre, who just 13 months ago was still
struggling to break into the Leicester squad having converted to hooker,
makes his British and Irish Lions Test debut against Australia.

Hungry Lion: Tom Youngs' place in Warren Gatland's team to face Australia was sealed by his ball-carrying prowess and rapid improvements in his throwing at line-outsPhoto: PA

It was a second XV match against Saracens four years ago that proved the making of the 26-year-old, triggering his transformation from an inside centre struggling to make his way in the professional game to a front-row forward who is about to reach the pinnacle of British and Irish rugby.

Youngs, who was captaining the side, got himself into a fight but rather than find himself in trouble with the then Tigers coach Heyneke Meyer, he was faced with a life-changing moment.

Meyer told Youngs that he wanted to try him out at hooker and it was a decision that Youngs would appreciate, even if it meant at the time going out on loan to Championship side Nottingham for two seasons.

While his younger brother Ben was breaking into the England squad at scrum-half, the position at which their father Nick won six caps for his country between 1983 and 1984, such was Youngs’ attraction to the physicality of the front row that he was prepared to even forego his shot at becoming a full-time professional.

“I remember ringing my dad up and saying something along the lines of I don’t really mind if I don’t make it back to the Premiership; I’m loving it playing hooker and playing at Nottingham,” said Youngs, who has been named in the Lions' starting XV ahead of Wales hooker Richard Hibbard, with brother Ben on the bench as scrum-half cover for Mike Phillips.

“Because I enjoyed it so much I committed to it so much more. It wasn’t like a chore for me to go and do it. I loved the physicality of the game. I loved every minute of it. There were times when I was getting my head shoved up my backside. There were bad times but they made me a better player. I have never regretted the decision at all.”

The tough times included the battle to learn the art of line-out throwing, which required endless hours with the Rugby Football Union’s forwards coach Simon Hardy to fine-tune his technique along with RFU sports psychologist Matt Thombs.

One of his other main challenges was to increase his playing weight as a centre from around 97kg to 104kg to play hooker, without surrendering any pace.

“It was quite hard at first,” recalled Youngs. “I could put the weight on quite easily but I couldn’t carry it around the park so I had to drop a couple of kilos here and build it up slowly over the course of the season. That was quite difficult but it was all about playing as many games as I possibly could in the season.

“When I was at Nottingham I played over 60 games for them over two seasons. I started pretty much every game and 80 minutes of every game just to get that repetition of playing at hooker.”

It was his sheer physical presence in the loose that first brought him to the attention of England last year as Youngs made his international debut against Fiji after just nine starts at hooker for Leicester.

It is that ball-carrying prowess, and the rapid improvements in his line-out throwing, as evidenced during a flawless display for the Lions during the impressive victory over New South Wales Waratahs last Saturday, that sealed his place in Warren Gatland’s side for the first Test.

“Even at the beginning of the season I wouldn’t have even thought about playing for the British and Irish Lions,” added Youngs, who now has nine England caps. “When you get your name read out for the tour you think brilliant, then you get to the tour and think you’d love to get in the Test 23 or even start any game.

“Then slowly but surely you start to get a hunger, ‘I want to start, I want to start’. I’m very fortunate to be given the opportunity to start in this game. It is a dream come true.”

Youngs’s head-to-head with Wallabies hooker Stephen Moore will be key. Yet you get the sense that it is a battle he intends to win as a way of saying thanks to those who helped shape his meteoric rise.

“It is quite hard to take in at the moment but when I am standing in that changing room tomorrow and running out, words cannot describe probably what will be going through my head and my heart will be pumping,” he added. “I cannot wait for it.”